Russia sends $1.3mn aid to Syria
August 2, 2013, 1:19 pm

The UN estimates that over 1.6 million have been turned into refugees since the start of the conflict [Getty Images]

Russia has sent a $1.3 million humanitarian aid package to Syria, the country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“A new batch of humanitarian aid was delivered to Damascus this week,” the ministry said.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill appealed for aid for Syria in June. The funds collected from that appeal have been used for shipping the package.

Food, clothes and medical equipment were sent to Damascus as part of the package collected in Russia by the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society based in Saint Petersburg.

The Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility for a fresh rocket attack on Thursday in which at least 40 people were killed and more than 150 injured, according to UK-based group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had earlier expressed confidence that the Syrian armed forces would be ‘victorious’.

“If we in Syria were not sure of victory, we would not have had the will to…persevere in the face of more than two years of aggression,” said the president.

The United Nations estimates that about 100,000 people have been killed in Syria and over 1.6 million have been turned into refugees since the start of the conflict in March 2011.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.